


Another Day

by Carbocat



Series: Up to Speed [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Jesse does not, One-Sided Attraction, Pietro falls in love fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:01:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: She grinned, and Pietro found himself fighting to keep his off his face – another speedster, wow – and then she waved to the group, “Uh, hi? Took a left at Earth-38, ended up here. My bad.”





	Another Day

They made him fast.

They made him capable of breaking the sound barrier, of besting the speeds of electricity, of being so much faster than speeding bullets and then they stuck him in a metal box.

It was a test – it had been explained to him multiple times, it had been kicked into him, taunted at him – it was a test. While scientists pondered the wonders of boundless uncontrollable burst of energy in limited space, Pietro hit walls.

They watched him pace back and forth with a frequency and a speed that he was starting to wear away the stone floor, trekking a groove into it. They watched as the energy that built up in cramped and stiff muscles started with tapping feet, moving to jiggling legs, and ending with him running uncontrollably into the walls at a hundred miles an hour. They watched as he bruised, bleed, cracked a few ribs and broke his nose, until the only solace that he could find was in the running track.

They used to laugh because he had been so stubborn, been so defiant and determined through every ordeal. They laughed, remembering the kid that realized too late that he was in over his head, that he could not save his sister – that kid that had refused to kneel before them until he was nothing more than blood and bruises on the floor. They laughed because now they could control him.

They laughed because they had failed to break the bond between him and Wanda, failed to use each other as weaknesses, and because Wanda’s powers were too unpredictable and violent to be poked and prodded. They laughed because they now had this – the cocky kid with a spit-fire mouth that needed to run, to burn off excess energy, that they could confine to a cell for hours, days, until the energy hurt.

They laughed because he would, eventually, beg to run.

So, they let him.

So, he ran.

Under the blazing sun, beating down on an unkempt worn-down running track, in air so thick that it stuck to the inside of his lungs, he ran. In triple digit heat and shoes that were more holes than shoe, in pain and exhaustion, brought on by the sun, the heat, the threats of if he stopped that outweighed the relief of the thought of doing so, something flickered in the distance. A mirage.

 They promised him solitude and darkness, the smallest box that they could fit him in. They promised to keep him away from Wanda, to lock him down so far that he wouldn’t feel even the slightest touches of her reach. If he stopped then they stopped giving this to him, stopped letting him run.

The Hydra agents, the scientists, and doctors, expected him to push himself and then the next day, push himself farther. He was expected to run as fast as he could and then be faster than that. They did not accept the limitation of his powers, did not accept that sometimes he was just tired, that he needed a break, that it was too damn hot. They only accepted the results and always found them lacking.

So, he ran.

And he ran, and he ran, until the edges of his vision were blurring and he wasn’t sure if it was the speed, the heat, or his own exhaustion causing it. He ran until the blur in the distance, in the corner of his eye grew into a fog of blueish gray and then opened like a vortex. He was vaguely aware of it being ahead of him when he lapped around the track, of it reaching out towards him, of something like longing pushing him towards going inside of it.

He pushed himself harder. He needed to go faster.

It was void-like and he was more than half convinced that he was having a heat stroke, that it had to be a hallucinating. It was swirling in front of him, stretching out to reach for him. Curiosity got the best of him and he nearly gave in, letting the tendrils of silvery-blue run between his fingers, letting the training grounds start to fade out of his sight.

There was a flash in the gray and blue, a bright scarlet red and skin as pale of snow. There was a mask, and green eyes, and a girl, and then he felt pain.

An electric shock ran through his body from the bracelet on his wrist, specially made for him to deter him from trying to escape. His muscles stiffened and then spasmed, and he fell. The training ground came back into view when he skidded across the unforgiving concrete of the running track.

When he pulled himself off the ground with shaking arms and wobbling legs, feeling the burn from skin that was scrapped away on his arms and face, the vortex and the girl were gone.

He hissed when another shock was sent through the bracelet, collapsing on the ground. Agents came running onto the track, guns poised and ready to shoot, pointing at him. They accused him of disappearing and escaping.

He denied it.

They beat him to teach him a lesson like they did to all attempted escapees, and hurled insults at him in English and German, and no matter how many times he told them that he hadn’t tried to escape, they did not listen. They shoved him in his cell, stripped away all privilege to the running track, to the treadmill, to anything. They told he’d learn his lesson the hard way.

It wasn’t until much later when Pietro had resumed the pacing, picking angrily at the scabs on his neck, that he heard Wanda’s voice like a whisper in his head, “Where did you go?”

“Where did I go?” He spoke, eyes directed at the wall that they shared, to where he thought that she would be. “I did not go anywhere, I was running.”

“You were gone, Pietro,” She told him. “I could feel it. For a week, six days. I countered. I thought that you-“

“I would never leave you behind, Wanda.”

“I know,” She told him and something like relief flooded his pounding heart. “You were there and then you weren’t, where did you go?”

He was grateful that she could not see him because he feared that he looked as confused and lost as he felt. He was grateful that Wanda did not often peak inside of his head because she would know about the vortex, about the pull of it, about how he was sure that it was the reason for this. He answered, he was not sure if it was honest or not, “I do not know.”

 

Clint Barton was something of interest to Pietro.

It may have been because he’d been cooped up for far too long and a little antsy, because they were disobeying orders just being in the field. Maybe Pietro was a little too cocky, maybe because he did want to knock the archer off his feet. If you asked him, he’d tell you that he chose Clint specifically because he was the easiest target but what had been so interesting about Clint Barton was that he got back up.  

Pietro had not gone easy on him when he hit him. It impressed him. At the very least, it left him intrigued by the archer.

There was this air around Clint, this complete and total awareness that he was just a man and that that did not mean that when life threw him into these weird-as-hell circumstances that he couldn’t do something extraordinary. He was confident in his abilities and how he wielded them, Pietro thought privately that anyone that could get the jump on him _and_ Wanda deserved to be.

He watched curiously as Barton braced himself against the spray of bullets, covering the kid with his body and accepting his fate. Clint’s superpower was acceptance, Pietro decided, something that he, himself, had never had the patience to master.

Clint Barton was nothing but an old man with a bow and arrow, palling around with people far more powerful than he was and despite all of that, he was here and he was ready to lay down his life for this kid that he did not know. Clint Barton was also a father of two with another little one on the way.

Pietro knew what it was like to grow up without parents and he did not wish to play a part in it happening to another child. One bullet could wound but it could be survivable. This many bullets would kill a man. Would kill anyone.  

So, he ran.

There was that bluish gray at the ends of his vision again, in the corner of his eyes, and that vortex that flickered in and out in indecision and then opened. He saw it sometimes when he ran fast enough but he never dared to venture back inside of it for fear of punishment. He had guessed that it was a portal to somewhere, to the future, at least a week into it.

He only ever peaked in it on the rare occasion that he was running fast enough to see it but he never went inside, looking but never finding the girl that he saw. He didn’t know why he looked, she was simply a mirage brought on by stress and heat, a hallucination in the swirls to trick him into coming inside. It was nothing more than that.

He had convinced himself of it, that she was nothing more than just a hopeful hallucination in the hellscape of Hydra prison but there she was, watery in the blue, like an afterimage, looking at him. He nearly tripped over his feet when she smiled, waving a hand and asked in a voice that he was surprised that he heard, that he understood it at this speed, “What Earth are you from?”

He shrugged, marveling at how she kept his speed so effortlessly. “The blue one?”

She laughed.

He wanted to tell her that he liked her laugh but she was gone in the space that it took him to move the upturned car in front of Barton and the child. He opened his mouth to speak, to call for her into the void – to follow her, maybe – but a pressure in his chest prevented him from doing so. And then there another piercing his arm, his shoulder, his stomach and his… he said it more to himself than to Clint, “You didn’t see that coming?”

So, he didn’t die.

No one was as shocked by that particular revelation as he was, gasping into consciousness mid-transfer to the morgue. Only to start pouring blood out of multiple wounds and nearly dying all over again. They told him that he was in a coma for nearly two weeks, that it was touch and go for a while because he’d lost so much blood, caused too much damage. They patted him on the back and told him that he’s stupid bull-headed stubbornness and Dr. Cho’s quick work was what stabilized him in the end.

Pietro was not convinced that Wanda did not have something to do with it.

Dr. Cho said that he should take it easy but Pietro had spent nearly three years following doctor’s orders, he was going to do what he wanted to do now.

So, he ran.

He made use of Stark’s indoor track, and he ran. He ran as hard and as fast as he could while still healing, he drilled himself harder than any Hydra agent to go faster than he ever had before. He wanted to train harder, to heal faster, to just _be_ faster. He wanted to prove that he deserved his spot on the Avengers like the rest of them, that he was ready to be out there with Wanda.

He knew what they thought because he thought it too. He should have easily outran those bullets. He had only turned to find the girl again but she was gone, vortex going with her, and then the bullets came. He couldn’t tell them that he was distracted by his own hallucination.

He asked around after he woke up, vague probing for answers, and he realized that they couldn’t see it. He had suspected that the Hydra agents had been blind to the vortex because they had never demanded it be used in their favor.

He had been so focused on his speed that he did not notice the vortex opening in front of him until he was nearly in it. He hadn’t noticed the girl until he practically ran into her. It was as if she vibrated straight through him without a second thought, it surprised him. She didn’t feel real, she didn’t look it either.

He stumbled to a walk when she disappeared from his view. The vortex dissipating around him and she was gone without a word. Another hallucination, he thought, it had to be some sort of side effect from the super soldier-strength painkillers he was on.

Pietro was an Avenger.

With a clean bill of health and the approval of Dr. Cho, he started his training and then field work. He enjoyed himself but…being an Avenger wasn’t all that it was cracked to be. Being free of Hydra’s touches, though better – so, so, so much better – it wasn’t exactly what he thought that it would be.

The rooms were bigger, the running tracks were better, and the was no looming threat of violence for disobedience. He was helping people like he always wanted to do but, it still felt like he was trapped. It was slowly dawning on him that he was going to be trapped in a slow universe forever, that he’d never escape.

He started searching the vortex.

It was exhausting and tiring because he was not used to running as speeds that fast regularly. It was starting to show in his work but he could not bring himself to care.

She wasn’t always there.

She was hardly ever there but he looked and he looked, and he looked. He started venturing farther inside of it but he would never go so far as to lose sight of where he was. He never recovered that week he went missing from the Hydra faculty and it was scary to think what could happen to Wanda if he disappeared into the vortex for a month, a year, a decade. It kept him from going too far.

He searched for her, tried to anyways, and the fact that he could not find her made him bitter. It furthered the belief that she was nothing more than a hallucination dredged up from longing for someone that could keep up with him.

He loved Wanda with all of his heart but sometimes he gave her a headache. She told him that she had a connection with the universe and because his energy was so fast, chaotic, and volatile that it hurt her head. He didn’t know how to slow down.

Even keeping pace during conversations was sometimes too difficult. There was already the language barrier because neither he nor Wanda knew English as well as the others were assuming they did, but he was also expected to be able to understand them speaking at a quarter of the speed he lived by and then supposed to respond at the same speed. He’d rather stay quiet.

There was an insanity to the slowness and he was sure that it was driving him slowly mad, having to force himself to go at such an unnatural speed just to be understood felt a lot like hell to him. It felt isolating because it was hard to do and no one really understood when he tried to explain it.

It was making him unhappy and Wanda could tell but there was nothing that either of them knew to do about it.

 

It was less of a battle and more of a scrimmage, practice.

The coms were filled with innuendos and jokes, sarcastic comments and curses. Pietro was in the middle of laughing at Stark for being taken out by a defective doombot and launched into a party store window front. He hadn’t noticed the vortex opening, the blur that he had long since stopped searching, or that it was not because of him.

He didn’t notice a thing until he ran full speed into a very solid body.

They both fell, skidding away and then stopping. He gasped.

The coms went silent but the silence hadn’t registered to him, nothing registered passed the woman in front of him, pulling glass and debris from her hair and readjusting her mask. She observed a tear in her uniform before deciding that there was nothing she could do about it.

It felt like a punch to the gut when she redirected her amused green eyes onto him and it left Pietro stuttering. She opened her mouth to speak but he beat her to the punch with a breathless, “You – you are real.”

She looked even more amused when she laughed, “’Course I am, Flash.”

She stuck out her hand for him in a speed so fast that it brought lighting with it, “Jesse Quick, formally of Earth-2, now of Earth-3.”

“Earth-3?” He asked, taking her hand almost numbly in his. There was a lightning bolt sewed into the palm of her glove.

“What Earth is this?” She asked and when he looked confused, she just shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t number them so I guess, Cisco would probably – it’s not important. Is this your first time meeting another speedster? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

More like a hallucination, he thought, but nodded almost slowly. One could say that he was shy when he asked, “Flash? What is-“

“Oh!” Her brow furrowed – he thought that it was cute – and she asked, “I just assumed…what do you call yourself?”

“Quicksilver.”

Before another word could be exchanged between them, the slow sound of Stark’s repulsers heating up reached them and Pietro became aware of the positions his team had taken around them. Most were standing guard; Stark was ready to shoot.

Pietro was on his feet before Jesse could do a Vulcan salute and say, “I come in peace.”

He knocked Tony off his feet, “Don’t.”

“Pietro?” Wanda asked questioningly. Nothing in her face shifted but he got her question loud and clear.

“She is not the enemy,” He told her. To prove this point, Jesse took out the rest of the doombots in the time it took Tony to get back to his feet. “See.”

She grinned, and Pietro found himself fighting to keep his off his face – another speedster, wow – and then she waved to the group, “Uh, hi? Took a left at Earth-38, ended up here. My bad.”

 

Jesse was from a different universe, she explained.

The vortex _was_ a portal. To the past, the future, to other worlds, and when he peaked inside and saw her, she was traveling often.  There were other speedsters, on other Earths. Though she did not blink an eye at the thought of super soldiers and Norse gods, she did seem confused by the concept of New York City. “It’s like our Metropolis, I guess.”

“What kind of Universe doesn’t have a New York?”

She was also impressed by Avengers Tower, “Wow, S.T.A.R. Labs has nothing on this. And it’s in the center of the city!”

It fed to Stark’s ego and he decided that even if he was still slightly suspicious of people that came out of portals, he liked her. Pietro rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders, “It’s not _that_ impressive.”

“It is, a little,” She grinned, flashing him a grin. She asked him who designed his uniform when they all convened in the kitchen to, in his case, stock up on calories. She poked fun at it’s simplicity and wear to it, Stark hasn’t mastered a fabric that didn’t fall apart after a month or two at high speeds. And she even offered to take his measurements for a guy she knew that would create a kickass ‘Quicksilver’ uniform. “How did you get the name?”

“I came up with it.”

“But…why?” She asked. “Is it because of your hair? Because that isn’t accurate. Cisco could come up with something if you wanted something new.”

“Is this – this Cisco,” Pietro asked, tearing the wrapper off another energy bar. “He is your boyfriend, yeah?”

She laughed and his heart did something stupid like fluttered, “No, Cisco is just my friend but he did design my uniform.”

“It is a nice uniform.”

“Thank you.”

“Uh…” Stark trailed off. It was in that moment that Pietro realized that all conversation around them had stopped and everybody was looking at him and Jesse. Hell, he got the eerie feeling that F.R.I.D.A.Y. was even looking at them. “Did any of you understand any of that? Nope, not just me. Just checking.”

“Eh?” Pietro asked.

Clint was the one that answered, “Chattering a million miles an hour, kid, no one has a damn clue what you’re talking about.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t know what to do with that so he stored it away until after he was showered and changes, and Jesse had opted out of borrowing something from Wanda and was parading around the lounge in the “Training for the Avengers” t-shirt Barton got him when he left the infirmary and a pair of his sweatpants. It was sitting there with her, chattering away about nothing, that he realized that they’d been talking at normal speed, at _his_ normal. She understood him.

His heart fluttered again.

“Nazis?” She said slowly, “You got your powers from Nazis?”

Pietro had shrugged, “This is not weirder than lightning.”

“It was actually a wave of energy from a particle accelerator.” 

“Po-tat-o, Po-tot-o.”

 

Competition was the nature of man and when confronted with two people of the same caliber of skill and power, someone will eventually suggest a contest. And when those people were speedsters, the contest was a race.

Challenges were made, bets were placed, and yeah, Pietro wasn’t sure if they were trash talking each other or flirting but he also didn’t care regardless. “You’re going down, _Quicksilver.”_

“Sure,” He shrugged, confident enough that he’d caught Clint rolling his eyes at it a few times. “But after I cross the finish line.”

“Let me know when you do,” She laughed. “It’ll be too far in my dust to see it.”

Wanda bet on him, Stark had too, and though Steve said it should be a friendly competition, he was nearly convinced to bet his shield on their speedster. To make it a fair bet, he sided with Jesse.

“I got your back, kiddo,” Clint said, slapping down a twenty. Natasha bet against him but then again, Pietro never sure if she actually likes him or not.

“What do I get when I win?” Jesse asked, rubbing her hands together fast enough to create lightning.

“ _If_ you win.”

“No, no,” She grinned. “I meant what I said.”

He was competitive. He always had been but even he had to laugh at it. The absurdity and giddiness of being in the presence of another speedster had not left him and really, Jesse was just charming, “You win, I buy you dinner. _When_ I win, Stark buy us dinner.”

She accepted that, sticking out her hand to shake his.

Pietro beat her to the punch, practically stealing the words from her mouth, “I will wait for you at the finish line.”

They got in position. On your march, get ready, and…

Pietro lost.

Jesse was faster than him, by a lot.

Pietro thought that he’d be bothered by that fact but he found that he wasn’t.

She was waiting at the finish line, arms crossed like she was bored but she had a big bright smile on her face. She let him catch his breath before holding up her hand for a high-five, “Man, you nearly get me at the Brooklyn Bridge. I thought for sure you’d overtake me.”

“You are fast,” He said, still kind of breathless. He was grinning. “Wow.”

“I think someone owes me dinner.”

He nodded, following her out of the gym, “Yes, I said that. Yes.”

Clint saddled up beside Wanda as they watched the speedsters leave the room. He was sure that they probably thought they were going slow but they weren’t. He nodded his head towards the door, “What do you think of that? A bit weird.”

“They are not weird,” Wanda sighed. “Just fast.”

“It’s still-“

“Pietro is happy.”

Clint nodded, “Yeah, I noticed that, too.”

He patted her on the shoulder before leaving, calling over his shoulder that he’d get her something for her headache.

 

 

Pietro was partial to Under Armour’s line of workout clothing. Barring when Pepper made them attend press meetings or promotional events, it was what he was wearing. It was why it was funny to see him contemplating an array of button-ups scattered over his bed when Wanda let herself into his room.

She held out a light blue striped collared shirt that matched his eyes, “Bruce does not like when you take his things.”

“I didn’t like when he threatened to kill you,” was Pietro fast and predictable response. He never let anything go.

She sighed and rolled her eyes before picking up one of the shirts on the bed, “You will never be able to fit anything that Steve wears, Brother.”

She pushed the shirt she brought into his hands, “This is from Tony’s closet, wear it. It will look nice.”

“Who said I want to look nice?” He asked, challenging.

She rolled her eyes again, she was not doing this song and dance again, “Because you are in love.”

He sputtered, “Eh?”

She gave him an unimpressed look and crossed her arms, “You heard me.”

“Not true,” He rolled his eyes, but he did take the shirt so Wanda supposed that that was some progress. “I just met her.”

“You are fast, yes,” She shrugged. “Fall in love fast. You always have.”

“I have not!”

“Ana, Elena, Maria…” She trailed off and then added. “The girl from the protests with the green hair, Ioana Albu from the orphanage for three years, Zrinka-”

“That is enough,” He muttered. “I do not love her.”

“ _Puh-lease_ , you fall in love in a day with every pretty girl you meet, Pietro.”

“It has been less than two hours, Wands.”

“She is special, like you.”

He did not love her. He barely knew Jesse.

He just knew that she was awesome. He thought that she was amazing, and talented, and smart, and fast. It was hardly even an opinion so much as it was just a fact. She was great. And yeah, he really liked her smile, and her eyes, and the way that she filled out the t-shirt he gave her. He just – “I barely know her, Wanda.”

“Uh-huh,” She nodded. “It has not stopped you before, no.”

“Shut up.”

“You love her,” She teased. “You asked her on a date.”

“I challenged her to a race and lost,” He rolled his eyes. “I did not _ask_ her.”

“It was your suggestion.”

“Stark mentioned that you and Vision snuck out the other night,” He stated and her jaw snapped shut. “Very interesting, Wands. Where were you?”

“Shut up.”

“No, no, let talk about crushes.”

Her eyes flashed red for a moment but Pietro was never one to back off when warned so she dropped the topic for a moment, “Do you want my help?”

“…Yes.”

 

“Do you need the talk, kid.”

“I should have let you get shot,” He shot a look that could have killed a lessor man to Clint. He asked suspiciously, “Did Wanda put you up to this?”

“Nope, this is all me,” Clint shrugged. “You’re lucky it is me. I had to beat Tony off with a stick to get here.”

“Where is he?”

“Talking to Jesse.”

“What?”

Clint laughed at the panicked look on Pietro’s face, “Kidding. Though he is going all out for your date-”

“Not a date.”

“-He’s on the phone getting you a reservation.”

“No need,” He told him, letting Clint take over tying his tie. Pietro never had the patience to learn. Clint raised an eyebrow. “I have a plan. You didn’t see that coming?”

“I didn’t think you’d have a lot of experience dating.”

“I do- it’s _not_ a date!”

 

In the weeks after arriving to New York, Pietro ran the entire length of the city. He covered every corner, every nook and cranny of the city and he loved it. He particularly loved a diner on the East side that advertised their greasy, high calorie food on their windows.

It was the only place that he’d found that didn’t require him to also eat a couple energy bars afterward to keep up his calorie intake. Jesse nodded at the windows, “This was not what I was expecting.”

“Good or bad?”

“Undetermined,” She answered. “I do love greasy food.”

Because the Avengers were celebrities, Pietro had garnered a lot of attention after almost dying, joining the team, and well, of course, he was young and attractive. That alone got you a fan base of some sort. 

“Why didn’t you tell me I was out with a celebrity?” Jesse teased when they took their meals to go. “I’m honored.”

“It is the same on your Earth, yeah?”

“No,” She laughed, shaking her head. “Our identities aren’t known. We keep it a secret, hence the mask. I guess it’d be pretty hard to hide Tony’s ego though.”

“It can be seen from space,” He agreed. “It’s astronomical.”

The night ended on the top of Stark Tower, and yeah, Pietro might have knocked out the cameras so they couldn’t be spied on but he suspected that they were watching anyways. It was the only explanation he had for how fidgety and nervous he suddenly felt.

Jesse was talking about her Earth and about the other ones that she visited. She told him about her dad, about the speedforce, a gorilla city, a monster called Zoom and another called Savitar. He told her about Ultron, about growing up during Sokovia’s revolution, about dying and joining the Avengers. He told her about Hydra, about wanting to protect Wanda from the riots and only making it worse, he told her about his parents.

“I do not know why I told you that.”

“Everybody you know always has an opinion on what happened,” She said softly, putting her hand softly over his. “It’s nice to talk about it with someone with no bias.”

She vibrated at a different frequency than him, Pietro noted offhandedly. He could feel it from where her hand rested on his, she was faster, in a more organized way than his cells did. He wasn’t sure why but that was the moment that he thought that Wanda might have been onto something.

“I have a boyfriend.”

She blurted out the words so fast that he nearly missed them. Her hand was against his chest, not pushing just holding him there. She was leaning back because he was leaning forward for a kiss. A boyfriend, oh.

“I know that,” He said almost on reflex and then shook his head. She dropped her hand when he moved back. “No, I did not. I did not know that.”

“His name is Wally,” She continued. “He lives on Earth-1, they call him Kid Flash and he got his powers the same way I did and I – I love him. A lot.”

“He is fast.”

It was not a question and it did not require an answer but Jesse provided one anyways, “Yes.”

“He is – is very lucky,” Pietro said. “To have someone his speed.”

Her face softened from its wide-eyed panicked expression to something more somber, “It is a crazy multiverse out there, Pietro, and this Earth, this universe is equally as crazy on its own. You’ll find somebody like you.”

“A Nazi experiment gone wrong?”

“A hero,” She replied. “You will find somebody, I promise you.”

He didn’t say anything more for a long time after that because he couldn’t crush that optimism in her voice, the surety in her eyes by telling her that all the hope that he’d ever had for living a happy life had collapsed in a building when he was ten. There was nobody to find. He had Wanda, he had the Avengers, but he was alone in this universe because he couldn’t be slow.

And though, he did want her.

Wanda had not been wrong – hell, everybody figured it out before him – he liked Jesse. He wanted every part of her. In a way that was neither lustful or possessive, he wanted her. Just to have her in his life, to have someone that he did not have to distort himself for but he could not have her.

She belonged to a different world, to so many different worlds, to worlds that had speedsters just like her.

He didn’t belong to her world. He never would.

He would not ask to come with her and she had yet to determine if it was her place to ask him too. She knew that he wouldn’t, deep down, they both knew. He made a promise all those years ago that he would never leave Wanda’s side and would not choose now to do it. He was just grateful that Jesse was no isolated going faster than the rest, that she was not alone. That she had this – this Wally.

“Why did you come here?” He asked. It felt almost cruel that she was here, that she was going to leave because he knew that she was eventually, that she was going to leave soon.

“I saw a man when I was traveling between the universes,” She answered. “He looked young, and sad, and lost. I thought that he could use some guidance because I had my dad, and Barry, and I didn’t think-”

“I didn’t,” He answered but shook his head. “That is not the real reason.”

“I moved,” She finally answered, speaking fast even for them. “To Earth-3, it’s a long story but they were down a speedster. I could help so I – I went.”

“It is a mistake, yes?”

“No,” She backtracked. “It wasn’t, I just… I did not expect it to be so lonely so I…I took a break.”

“You came here.”

“You looked sad.”

“…Thank you,” He said after a moment. “For coming. I really – I am glad that you did.”

She smiled, “Me too.”

 

A speedster’s relationship with time was strained, incompatible. A day was twenty-four hours to the average person but to a speedster, it was far more than that. It felt like a year in a day, more so when nothing much was going on.

The city had been unusually quiet for a week now when Jesse showed up and it had been slowly driving Pietro crazy. The scrimmage with the doombots had been a small relief but Jesse had been a reprieve.

She stayed until the morning.

They talked more about everything, about Wanda crush on Vision and if Pietro should be a protective brother or just an annoying one about it. They talked about Wally and yeah, Pietro couldn’t help but like the guy. He seemed like a great boyfriend and friend but – “Kid Flash? Really?”

She laughed, “Because Quicksilver is better.”

“It is!”

She held up her hands in defeat, “It’s no Jesse Quick.”

“…I will give you that,” He conceded.

“Okay, on three, what is the worst part about being a speedster?” She asked, a big grin on her face. “One, two, three-“

“Bugs!” They answered at the same time and then laughed.

“It’s the worst!” She agreed.  “I swear I swallowed a bee last week.”

He laughed, “I thought about adding goggles after I took a mosquito to the eye.”

She opened her mouth to reply before realizing that they made it to their destination. It was the alleyway that he’d been running down when she crashed into him, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” He nodded, his smile falling off of his face. “I guess that you should be-“

“I’ll visit again,” She told him. “And I’ll bring Wally. And if you ever end up in my universe-”

“I will find you,” He nodded.

He hugged her and was surprised when she kissed him on the cheek, “Thank you, Pietro.”

“Thank you.”

And then in a flash, she was gone.


End file.
